U Maine students unveil kinetic sculptures

ORONO, Maine (NEWS CENTER)-- Mechanical Engineering Technology students at U Maine have been working on a project for the entire school year, and today they unveiled the kinetic sculptures that they have been working on.

Engineering student Jeff Soreide and his teammates worked on their kinetic sculpture for most of the academic year. After today their sculpture will be going to the Bangor Discovery Museum.

"It's all about getting the kids involved and interested in science. Interested in engineering. We're really trying to bring the younger crowd in, kids that might not necessarily be interested in science and engineering. We wanna attract those kids in and say hey science can be fun and interesting," Soreide said.

But there was a little competition too. The eight teams that participated were judged in several areas including aesthetics and durability. Some of the judges were kids, who voted for which sculpture they liked best. Soreide thinks his team had the kids vote locked up.

"The Newton's Cradle is really kind of interesting, there's a lot of science in that. It's conservation of energy. A ball come down, hits the ball, ball swings out, hits and it goes down a loopty loop," Soreide said.

These projects are not a typical weekend science project. Soreide and his teammates said they spent a couple thousand hours working on their project.

"We spent at least 2,400 hours just in building and testing. There was on three week period where we put in close to 1,000 hours of those hours," Soreide said.

Soreide and his teammates won today's competition and their reward for winning is an automatic A for their cap stone course.